Submitted for your approval....

Today is the birthday of one of my favorite famous people: Rod Serling. His impact on my early years is what helped create ME and all the delicious paranoia that I hold dearly to myself.

Here's to you, Rod; Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday and thank you for all that you gave me, and probably other FoRT members, too!

Does anyone else have favorite stories or shows of the Twilight Zone?

"Born in Syracuse, New York in 1924, Rod Serling grew up in the small upstate city of Binghamton. The son of a butcher, he joined the army after graduating from high school in 1942. His experiences of the working-class life of New York, and the horrors of World War II enlivened in him a profound concern for a moral society. After returning from the service, Serling enrolled as a physical education student at Antioch College, but before long realized that he was destined for more creative endeavors.

Changing his major to English literature and drama, Serling began to try his hand at writing. As a senior, after marrying his college sweetheart, Carolyn Kramer, he won an award for a television script he had written. Encouraged by the award, Serling started writing for radio and television. Beginning in Cincinnati, he soon found a home for his unique style of realistic psychological dramas at CBS. By the early 1950s he was writing full-time and had moved his family closer to Manhattan.

Serling had his first big break with a television drama for NBC, called PATTERNS. Dealing with the fast-paced lives and ruthless people within the business world, PATTERNS was so popular it became the first television show to ever be broadcast a second time due to popularity. Throughout the 1950s he continued to write probing investigative dramas about serious issues. He was often hounded by the conservative censors for his uncompromising attention to issues such as lynching, union organizing, and racism. Television dramas including REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT and A TOWN HAS TURNED TO DUST, are still considered some of the best writing ever done for television.

Fed up with the difficulties of writing about serious issues on the conservative networks, Serling turned to science fiction and fantasy. Through an ingenious mixture of morality fable and fantasy writing, he was able to circumvent the timidity and conservatism of the television networks and sponsors. Self-producing a series of vignettes that placed average people in extraordinary situations, Serling could investigate the moral and political questions of his time. He found that he could address controversial subjects if they were cloaked in a veil of fantasy, saying "I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say."

The series was called THE TWILIGHT ZONE and was incredibly popular, winning Serling three Emmy Awards. As the host and narrator of the show, he became a household name and his voice seemed always a creepy reminder of a world beyond our control. The show lasted for five seasons, and during that time Serling wrote more than half of the one hundred and fifty-one episodes. But for Serling, television was an inherently problematic medium—requiring the concessions of commercials and time restrictions.

For much of the 1960s and into the 1970s Serling turned to the big screen, writing films that included a remake of REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT (1962), THE YELLOW CANARY (1963), and ASSAULT ON A QUEEN (1966). His most famous, however, was the classic PLANET OF THE APES (1968), co-written with Michael Wilson. Similar to his early work on THE TWILIGHT ZONE, THE PLANET OF THE APES was a moralistic tale of contemporary life told through a science-fiction fantasy in which Apes have taken over the world. Dealing with question of how we act as a society and how we view ourselves as moral beings, PLANET OF THE APES was a culmination of Serling’s career-long interests as a writer.

By the early 1970s, he found a job teaching in Ithaca, New York. Continuing to write for television, he sought to impart a sense of moral responsibility and artistic integrity to the new generation of television writers. In June of 1975, he died of a heart attack. Today, more than twenty-five years after his death, Serling’s legacy continues to grow. His television and cinematic works have reached cult status—enlivening a new interest in one of the great early writers of American television. "

I remember the one called Midnight Sun where something happens in space and sends the earth toward the sun, and it keeps getting hotter and hotter. I can't remember how it ends.
The other one I remember is "Eye of the Beholder" where the young woman is desperate to look "normal". She is actually very beautiful but is considered hideously ugly in the society she lives in because she looks different than everybody else.

The Sci-Fi Channel always holds marathons of the Twilight Zone on New Year's Eve and Sally grudginly/graciously allows me to fill up my quota on paranormal paranoia each and every year. I guess I'll be guilt-free in watching it this year.

I have SO many of the shows that have deeply imprinted themselves on me and really, TRULY changed my life, at a wee age.

The one with Bergis Meredith, as a librarian, after a Nuclear War.

The uber-famous one with William Shatner and the "thing" on the wing of the aircraft. I think it's called "Nightmare at 20,000 feet.

The one you mentioned, Marleybone, where all the people looked like PIGS!

A horrendous one where a pretty girl is resisting having herself turned into a clone of 1000's of other girls, because "unique" just doesn't sell any more.

There's been a lot of talk about the various TZ CD's out there and a lot of angry people. Apparently, from what I've read, the CD's keep getting reissued and reissued as the latest "Definitive T.Z." set, and they toss in a couple of extra minutes of crap here and there. So, for true fans, they feel like they've been getting ripped off, each and every time that the LAST 'definitive' CD set gets replaced by yet another "LAST" set.

That's the only thing that's kept me from buying the collection; I want the dust to settle and a final, or semi-final, set to come out.

I remember the one called Midnight Sun where something happens in space and sends the earth toward the sun, and it keeps getting hotter and hotter. I can't remember how it ends.

This was my favorite episode. The last scene in the episode shows the young man, very ill and delirious, with a Doctor attending him. Ah! All just a dream, but it seems that instead of the sun getting nearer to the earth it's actually moving away, and everyone will be frozen in a matter of weeks. Chilling!

Does anyone remember an episode with Elizabeth Montgomery in a post nuclear society? I vaguely recall raggedly- dressed people fighting over a chicken leg?

This was my favorite episode. The last scene in the episode shows the young man, very ill and delirious, with a Doctor attending him. Ah! All just a dream, but it seems that instead of the sun getting nearer to the earth it's actually moving away, and everyone will be frozen in a matter of weeks. Chilling!

Does anyone remember an episode with Elizabeth Montgomery in a post nuclear society? I vaguely recall raggedly- dressed people fighting over a chicken leg?

It was Elizabeth Montgomery and Charles Bronson. The episode about the sun I thought it was a woman who was ill, as a matter of fact yes it was Lois Nettleton playing "Norma" in the Midnight Sun episode.

I really liked all of the twilight zones episodes, but the ones with Burgess Meredith were always good.